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Forty-five years in the political trenches

Bob Runciman stepped down from the Senate on his 75th birthday this week, ending a political career that spans four decades of representing Brockville and Leeds and Grenville.

Runciman doesn’t like to call it a “retirement,” saying he has lots of gas left in his tank and he wants to move on to new challenges.

But his leaving the Senate certainly marks a milestone in a career in public life that includes nine years on Brockville city council, 29 years in the provincial legislature as the MPP for Leeds and Grenville and seven years in the Senate. Runciman served as cabinet minister of six different ministries under three premiers, was interim leader of the Opposition for two years and served as interim leader of the Progressive Conservatives.

Runciman said he is leaving the Senate with a sense of accomplishment, having sponsoring 12 bills that eventually became law, including three of his own. He chaired the legal and constitutional affairs committee for 5½ years, dealing with such significant issues as rewriting the prostitution laws, a victims’ bill of rights and doctor-assisted suicide.

But his time as a senator had its share of disappointments, too. When Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed him to the Senate on Jan. 29, 2010, Runciman already had a reputation as an advocate of Senate reform, having introduced bills in Queen’s Park calling for elected senators.

But Runciman said the Harper government never made Senate reform a priority as he had hoped. When the expense scandals broke involving Senator Mike Duffy et al, the government didn’t want to have anything to do with the Senate, he said.

“There was a lot of resentment – you could feel it in the air, it was palatable,” he said. “They (the government) would have preferred to open the door and shove us out, I think.”

Runciman thinks the best hope for Senate reform now lies with Jason Kenney, who is running to lead the combined conservative forces in Alberta. If he wins that leadership and goes on to become premier, Kenney would have a national platform to champion an elected Senate, Runciman said.

Despite the disappointments, Runciman said he liked his time in the Senate.

He said a senator has much more opportunity than a backbench MP to get bills passed. Backbenchers might be lucky to get one private member’s bill passed in a 12- or 16-year career, he said, while as a senator he has seen three bills become law.

“Getting appointed to the Senate and serving there was a huge honour and for the most part a really enjoyed the opportunity to deal with the issues that I cared about,” he said.

But as far as political effectiveness goes, nothing beats being around the cabinet table in government, Runciman said.

“Once you’re in government you can really make things happen,” he said.

For example, Runciman cites the decision to locate the casino in Gananoque in 2001. The head of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation was opposed to Gananoque, and Premier Mike Harris and others were uncertain, he said. Runciman managed to persuade cabinet allies to back Gananoque, and it won the day.

Runciman is also proud of his role in saving the Brockville Courthouse. The bureaucrats in the Attorney-General’s Office wanted to build a new courthouse in the city’s north end, and scrap the historic building downtown – move that would have dealt a serious blow to the viability of downtown Brockville, he said.

Runciman said he was friends with the attorney-general of the time and managed to persuade him to renovate the courthouse, even though it cost three or four times more than building a new one. The Brockville courthouse is now “one of the finest courthouses in Ontario,” he said.

Ticking off the list of his local successes while in cabinet, Runciman said he is proud of his role of bringing to life the secure treatment unit for mentally-troubled inmates.

He was solictor-general when one of his assistant deputy ministers noted the closing of the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital and said the government could use a secure treatment centre for mentally-disturbed provincial inmates. Runciman said he spent a lot of time stickhandling the proposal through the halls of government. First he had to get the health minister to agree, then the treasury board to cough up the money and finally sell the package to cabinet.

Runciman was successful, and the result is a 100-bed treatment unit that has dramatically reduced re-offending rates. The centre has been studied internationally by governments that want to copy its success, he said.

Aside from his local successes, Runciman is proud of his provincial accomplishments as solicitor general and as provincial opposition leader for two years and a stint as leader of the Progressive Conservatives.

As solicitor general during the 1997 ice storm, Runciman was responsible for emergency response in Ontario.

“That was one of the most gratifying times that I spent in government,” he said. “The way we responded to it and the way individuals and families responded to it was a moment of great pride.”

Runciman had many high points during his 29 years at Queen’s Park but there were some lows as well. One of the lowest was when Runciman had to resign as solicitor general in 1997 after the Throne Speech mentioned the name of the mother of a young offender, thus identifying the youth. In the ensuing political storm, Runciman had to step down. Although he had no part in writing the Throne Speech, Runciman had to take the political hit but he was back in cabinet in a few months after an investigation cleared him.

Runciman won eight straight elections as MPP for Leeds, later called Leeds and Grenville, and he came close to being defeated only once – in 1987.

That was the year of political hell for Runciman. He first had to stave off a challenge for the PC nomination from Steve Clark, then the mayor and the Boy Wonder of Brockville politics.

“That was the most stressful period of our lives,” Runciman said. “I found it hard to get out of bed in the morning.”

Runciman managed to fend off Clark’s challenge in a hard-fought nomination battle, only to run into an even harder fight in the general election that followed.

In 1987, the year of Liberal David Peterson’s sweep, Runciman faced a tough Liberal opponent in Jim Jordan, who was later a Liberal MP.

Jordan won every poll in Brockville and Max Keeping of CTV announced that Runciman had lost his seat. Runciman said he was on his way to Jordan’s headquarters to concede when a Conservative worker stopped him and told him to wait. Some bedrock Conservative rural polls had yet to be counted. In the end, Runciman won by 198 votes after two recounts.

Runciman praises his wife Jeannette for helping him through the bad days and standing by him during the other times. He couldn’t do it without her, he said.

In fact, family has always been important to Runciman’s career. He caught the political bug from his father, Sandy Runciman who was the longtime editor of The Recorder and Times. The elder Runciman, who was a backroom wheeler-dealer for both the provincial Tories and the federal Liberals, used to hold forth on politics around the dinner table.

Runciman started to work at Brockville Chemicals while freelancing for Ottawa papers. He was elected to Brockville council in 1972 at the age of 30 and served on council until 1981 when he went to Queen’s Park. He remained a full-time politician until reaching the Senate’s mandatory retirement age of 75 this week.

As for the future, Runciman said he’s taking a wait-and-see approach. He said he’s worked full time since he was 19 and now want to take some time at the cottage and do long-delayed repairs.

Runciman still has the political fire in his belly, however. During the run-up to the next provincial election, Runciman said he has agreed to help the Progressive Conservative Party in Ontario by giving speeches in London, Toronto and Ottawa.

“I’m doing to do what I can to get rid of the Liberal government in Ontario.”